This Week In Favs……….

 

Welcome, welcome! This is entry #2 for ‘This Week in Favs…’

It was a bit of a slow week for me, but I do have a few goodies: contests, another So You Think You Can Dance clip (an oldie but a goodie), and a great critique post I discovered this week!

10) I found another blog to follow this week: The Character Therapist. Jeannie, aka The Therapist, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and….a writer! As I perused through her past posts, I found her ‘Character Clinics’ to be extremely insightful. And bonus! The ‘Character Clinics’ are actual assessments for writers. Double bonus! Jeannie offers detailed assessments where you can put your character on the couch for only $14.99. Jeannie also gives away a free copy of her Writer’s Guide to Character Motivation upon signing up for her quarterly newsletter. I’ve gotten my copy, so get over there and sign up! This is one blog I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on.

9) Contest #1: “An Agent’s Inbox” on Mother.Write (Repeat.)There’s not much time left on this contest (as the participating queries have been chosen and winners will be announced on Tuesday), but I felt this contest definitely deserved to be mentioned. Krista’s blog turned into an agent’s inbox with 20 queries (and their first pages), each one posted out there for us to critique. The winner and their prize is chosen by “The Agent”. My favorite part was getting on there and reading all of the queries and first pages. I’ve been thinking on a few and look to offer some critiques of my own over the weekend. As writers, we know that by critiquing someone else’s work, we in turn become more aware of our own writing (and that’s only part of it).

8) “What Do You Wish You Had Known When You Started Writing?” post from Nathan Bransford. Nathan’s post was simple by sharing his own ‘What I Wish I Had Known’: “I wish I would have known that whatever happens in any particular manuscript: it’s all worth it.” The nugget in this post for me isn’t just what Nathan shared, but what his commenters shared…. 120 comments total. Some were insightful while others had me cracking up.

7) Contest #2 is over on Paranormal Point of View where you can win a pre-ordered copy of Original Sin, book #2 in the Personal Demons series by Lisa Desrochers. Ms. Desrochers has a guest post on Lisa’s blog, and one lucky commenter will have a chance at winning Original Sin. I have yet to meet Luc, from this series, but after reading Ms. Desrochers guest post/scene, I am definitely intrigued and sold on picking up the first book and getting into this series!

6)  I’ve been on information overload this week!!! Since I’ve begun my first round of edits, I have been out there, surfing the blogs and looking for tips/tricks to use during this process. There’s just tooooo many articles and posts out there to weed through them all. So, I found myself reverting back to a post that I read by Lisa Gail Green: ‘Finding the Horcrux’. Taking her advise, I have continued to skim all of the articles/posts out there and have managed to not only keep, but maintain organized files of all the tips and tricks on editing and re-writes. I highly recommend you get over there and check it out! 

5) Here’s another So You Think You Can Dance goodie! This dance is from Season 2, and half of the pair is Travis Wall (who choreographed the dance goodie in last week’s post). This one was choreographed by the FABULOUS Mia Michaels. 

This particular piece brought a tear to my eye. It’s lovingly referred to as ‘The Park Bench’ routine. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did….and still do!

4) I’ve been a little bummed about missing out on RWA11 this week, but I still got a little goodie in the mail from Thea Harrison: Elder Races trading cards!

Thea posted on her Facebook page about a week before RWA letting her fans know that we could send her a SASE and she would pop them in the mail for us before she headed out to RWA11 and taking the rest with her. Check ‘em out! *squee*

3) Contest #3: ‘Milestone Contest – Prize: Me! Wait…er, What?’ from Jami Gold. What a milestone indeed! To celebrate Jami’s upcoming one-year blogiversary, her 101st blog post is a contest where she will let the winner dictate the prize. BUT, as she states, she doesn’t intend to land in jail over this, so some of the ideas she’s thrown out are: $25 Amazon GC, Critique of your first chapter, synopsis or query letter, Beta read up to 25,000 words, email brainstorming, guest blog post, books from her personal collection, and the list goes on. What do you have to do to enter? Well, first off, get over there and visit her (if you haven’t already)!!! Next, leave a comment. She’s picking 1 winner per every 25 commenters, and if I remember correctly, she’s up to 3 winners as of Thursday afternoon. But don’t just stop there. She posted a great article on Thursday: ‘How Vulnerable is Your Writing?’. Peruse through her posts. You’ll soon discover why I would love to pick her brain one day.

2) “3 Feedback Traits I Adore” from Mary Baader Kaley (is) Not an Editor. This post was right on the money for me! These are the same feedback traits that I LOVE: Honesty, Thoughtful Reflection, and Personality. Katie (my CP) and I had just recently discussed that we wanted a CP that was brutally honest without crossing the line of being mean. This was a perfect post given our recent discussion, and it has made it into my files (per fav #6).

1) Since Tuesday, I have been looking forward to this upcoming, long, holiday weekend. On the agenda: Transformers 3, grilling out with my bestie (aka-Piece of My Heart), edits/re-writes, and….. rest, rest, rest.

 

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday weekend!!!

Happy Reading!

Melinda